Mother kept able-bodied son in a wheelchair for five years so 'he would never leave her'

A single mother kept her young son in a wheelchair for five years because she feared he would become independent and leave her, a court heard yesterday.

The 31-year-old tricked doctors into believing the child, now 11, was ill and could not walk as part of the bizarre child cruelty plot.

She claimed her son regularly suffered fits and duped her GP into prescribing medication to treat him.

It was only when the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, gave the boy an accidental overdose that she was found out.

Paramedics called to her home became suspicious after she tried to hide medication she had given the boy.

Police were alerted and she confessed to a psychiatrist that she had fabricated his condition because she was worried the youngster would eventually become independent and leave home.

Yesterday the woman was jailed for four years after admitting three charges of child cruelty and one of administering a noxious substance between 1999 and 2006. Her son has been taken into local authority care.

Judge Les Spittle, who banned the woman from working with children for life, told her: "You robbed him (her son) of a normal childhood.

"It is fortunate that he has not suffered any long-term physical disability but I don't know what the potential long-term psychological impact there will be."

Teeside Crown Court heard that the woman's bizarre behaviour began in 1999 when her son was aged just three.

She started pushing the toddler around in a wheelchair and told family and friends that he needed the device because he regularly had fits and suffered from painful swelling in his joints.

The mother took her son to her GP and persuaded him to prescribe medication after claiming her son was suffering from chronic constipation and was having regular fits.

The GP referred the boy to hospital and he was examined by paediatricians seven times.

They carried out numerous blood tests, but could find no explanation for his apparent illness.

Only when the woman accidentally gave the boy an overdose of his prescription medicine, which prompted the child to suffer a proper fit, was she found out.

Ambulance crews who attended her home, in Middlesbrough, Teeside, reported her behaviour after they caught her trying to hide the medication from them.

Police were called and she was arrested.

In interviews she confessed to a psychiatrist that she had kept her son in a wheelchair because she wanted him to become so dependent on her that he would never leave her.

Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, told Teeside Crown Court: "She succeeded in engendering in him the belief that he needed a wheelchair and that he had a condition for five and a half years.

"This significantly hampered his mobility and social development. He had seven referrals to paediatricians but no abnormality was found."

Psychiatrists who examined the woman said that she was not mentally ill.